Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) suggested on Tuesday that the Senate will need to pass a defense supplemental spending package when Congress returns from August recess next month.
Cardin made the comments while speaking to reporters outside the Senate floor after a pro forma session, where one member quickly gavels the chamber in and out. Congress faces the threat of a government shutdown and a broader dispute about defense spending levels when it returns in September.
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The federal government runs out of money on Sept. 30, and the House and Senate each have only 12 in-session days between now and then to find a resolution in order to prevent a shutdown. Further complicating matters, House and Senate appropriators have spent months marking up government funding bills at different spending levels.
On the Senate side, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) and ranking member Susan Collins (R-ME) have been advancing the 12 annual appropriations bills using spending levels agreed upon as part of President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) deal to avert a debt default in May.
Senators across the ideological spectrum were furious over the defense caps in the deal, which would put the Pentagon out of step with the rate of inflation and harm their overall ability to allocate adequate resources where needed. Facing a potential mutiny from defense hawks threatening to tank the agreement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pledged to bring a supplemental defense spending bill up for a vote later in the year.
“I think we recognize we're not happy with [that deal], we recognize that. But now it's complicated because we really need some emergency appropriations,” Cardin said of the initial debt ceiling deal. “We know that as a result of Ukraine, we know that as a result of what happened with the fires in Hawaii, in Maui, there's going to be some emergency spending that’s going to be a necessary part of this.”
McCarthy's mere four-vote majority in the House leaves him with little room for defections within his conference, though he already has upward of 20 members demanding appropriators write their 12 bills at fiscal 2022 spending levels, below the numbers in the debt limit deal. He has also rejected the notion of the House passing a defense supplemental.
The House speaker told members on a call last week that he expects a short-term continuing resolution will be necessary to give both chambers enough time to pass and negotiate their 12 appropriations bills. Schumer also expressed support for the idea last Tuesday.
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“A supplemental can be attached to whatever we can get done, or it could be the engine for what moves, and maybe a couple of things get added to a supplemental,” Cardin said when asked if he supported the supplemental being attached to the short-term CR.
“The supplemental sort of drives itself, the timing, the need for it," he added. "So it’s not waiting for another vehicle to attach it to, it’s more: when do we need the supplemental? I think we're going to need a supplemental in September."